Šotra was born in the village of Kozice, near Stolac, at the time part of the Littoral Banovina of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (modern Bosnia and Herzegovina), into an ethnic Serb family (Herzegovinian Serbs).
Already a prominent TV director, 46-year-old Šotra made his feature film debut in 1979 with Osvajanje slobode, a post-World War II story written by Gordan Mihić about a cultural and infrastructural rebuilding effort in the small Serbian town.

He came back two years later with a folksy comedy Šesta brzina starring Zoran Radmilović. The following year, 1982, Šotra revisited the post-war theme with Idemo dalje, starring Dragan Nikolić as a World War II young Partisan transitioning into his new life as a schoolteacher as the war is coming to an end.

In 1983 came the spectacular World War II drama Igmanski marš, a high-budget project of the partisan film genre.